NATIONS TO REDUCE HARMFUL EMISSIONS.

Byline: Michael Zielenziger Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

In a chaotic finale, the world's industrial nations embarked on an unprecedented program to curb climate change, agreeing today to join together to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.

The plan would compel the world's richest countries to reduce their output of greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent from the levels they produced in 1990. U.S. firms would be given incentives to transfer technology and build energy-efficient facilities in the developing world, while getting credits to offset their polluting activities in the United States.

But the pact, approved after an arduous and sometimes acerbic all-night debate, left for future meetings to decide how to bring the world's lesser-developed nations into the fold. It failed to create legal penalties for those nations that exceed their maximum emissions of ozone-destroying gases.

And efforts by the United States to forge a stronger and more comprehensive pact that would include ``meaningful participation'' by developing nations were torpedoed by China and India. They complained that plans to create market-based devices to control greenhouse gases would unfairly take advantage of the world's poor.

Nonetheless, chief U.S. negotiator Stuart Eizenstat hailed the so-called Kyoto Protocol.

``This is a genuinely significant first step,'' an exhausted Eizenstat told reporters after 24 hours of nonstop negotiations. ``It is a framework for action, but it is a structurally sound framework. . . . This is the real bridge between the developed and the developing world.''

On the 11th morning of what had been a planned 10-day conference, Raul Estrada Oyuela of Argentina, chairman of the United Nations climate talks, gaveled the meeting to a close, long after the sun rose high over the hills of this ancient capital city. By this time, janitors were cleaning the hall for the next convention, and Chinese and Russian interpreters had departed for home.

``This is going to have an effect on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,'' Estrada said as the summit adjourned after 10 a.m. today. ``I think we should celebrate.''

However, the deal fell far short of the early, ambitious aspirations of the Clinton administration, which insisted developing nations take ``meaningful steps'' to begin reducing their production of ozone-destroying gases. The final agreement stripped away some of the flexibility sought by the Clinton administration. The U.S. delegation pushed a compromise that would enable the United States - the world's largest producer of these harmful gases - to comply with the terms of the treaty by cleaning up dirty factories in the Third World.

Still, it appeared likely the White House would back the treaty, though it might wait as long as a year to sign the measure and send it to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it is almost certain to face stormy opposition. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said U.S. lawmakers ``will not ratify a flawed treaty.''

Eizenstat insisted that a one-day visit by Vice President Al Gore earlier in the week to this United Nations-sponsored conference helped alter the momentum of the talks, which he called ``the most complex international negotiations held in recent memory.''

``The Kyoto Protocol is a work in progress and a framework for progress,'' Eizenstat said. ``It does represent a very real victory for President Clinton's policy outlook and approach.''

Key to finalizing the deal was establishing firm targets for reduction of greenhouse gases among developed nations. Though final calculations of the pact still were being completed, Eizenstat said the United States had agreed to cut its emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels for six key greenhouse gases.

The European Union would cut its gas production by 8 percent and Japan by 6 percent. For the United States, officials estimated, the reduction would slightly exceed 30 percent from current production levels.

Reductions for all three would be calculated for a five-year period beginning in 2008, though nations could receive credit for reducing their production of the harmful gases before then.

Even more important to Clinton, the protocol permits advanced industrial nations to win pollution ``credits'' at home for investing in clean technologies that are built in underdeveloped nations. Thus, a Utah utility that paid for a clean-burning power plant in China could use those benefits to burn dirtier fuels in its U.S. plants.

The agreement also would permit nations to plant carbon-absorbing forests as means to offset emissions of the dangerous gases.

But a plan viewed as mutually beneficial by U.S. officials was viewed with suspicion and hostility by developing nations who suspect rich nations aren't willing to clean up their own messes at home.

``Emission trading per se cannot bring about actual reductions; they are just transfers,'' said Chen Yaobang, vice chairman of China's State Planning Commission and leader of Beijing's delegation. ``What we are all for are actual reductions. We don't mind if the target is low as long as the target is actual. This is a question of human rights.'' Sometime in the middle of the next century, many scientists predict, China, with a population exceeding 1.5 billion, could become the biggest producer of greenhouse gases.

Added Vijay Sharma, India's chief delegate: ``Any idea which has the potential of depriving the world's developing countries, the world's poor, of equitable entitlements to grow cannot be allowed to take root.''

U.S. officials called the Kyoto pact a ``road map'' because the summit deferred difficult decisions about whether financial or other penalties can be imposed on nations that fail to meet their targets. Scientists say these gases, especially carbon dioxide, are gradually heating the world's atmosphere and could cause severe meteorological havoc.

Though details of the pact still were being digested, environmentalists were quick to praise the accord as a praiseworthy first step, while business interests said it would cause American workers to lose jobs.

FACTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING 

Here is a summary of global warming, its causes, effects, questions:

CAUSES, SYMPTOMS: Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil produce gases that accumulate in the atmosphere and trap infrared radiation emitted from Earth. Scientists believe rising temperatures in the past century have been caused at least in part by man's activities, along with rising levels of oceans, which expand when warmed.

PROJECTIONS: A U.N.-organized network of scientists predicts continued emissions at current rates would raise global temperatures 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, and sea levels 6 inches to 3 feet. Islands and shorelines would be inundated, climate zones would shift abruptly, weather would grow more turbulent.

UNCERTAINTIES: Climate system's extreme complexity means computer simulations of warming and its impact are imprecise. Skeptics say that's a weak basis for international action. Major uncertainties involve the role of clouds in warming or cooling atmosphere, and the role of oceans in absorbing atmospheric heat.

TOP 10 EMITTERS: In 1992, the United States emitted the most carbon dioxide, followed by China, Russia, Japan, Germany, India, Ukraine, Britain, Canada and Italy.

CAPTION(S):

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BOX: Facts about global warming (see text)